Alexander James Curtis (born 1975) is an American former white supremacist and neo-Nazi. He was one of the white supremacist movement's earliest popular internet figures and ran a magazine called the Nationalist Observer out of San Diego, California. He is most well-known for, with Tom Metzger, popularizing the term "lone wolf" in reference to terrorism. He promoted antisemitism and white separatism and celebrated right-wing terrorists online, including murderers Timothy McVeigh and Eric Rudolph. Curtis also advocated lone wolf terror acts, including assassinations, and gave tips on how to commit violence, including bioterrorism.

In 1998, the San Diego Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation began a joint investigation of Curtis entitled Operation Lone Wolf as an investigation of his potential criminal activities. The FBI investigation cemented the term "lone wolf terrorism" as the popular term for what Curtis advocated. Curtis acted with other racist activists to harass several San Diego figures he opposed, among them Art Madrid and Bob Filner. In November 2000, shortly after a report by the Anti-Defamation League, Curtis was arrested and charged federally with three counts of having a conspiracy to commit civil rights violations. Three of his followers were also charged. Curtis pleaded guilty in March of the next year, and in June was ultimately only sentenced to three years in prison after an agreement to stop affiliating with racist causes. His websites ceased functioning due to his imprisonment. Curtis ceased being involved in the white supremacist movement after his release.

Alexander James Curtis was born in Point Loma, San Diego, California, U.S. in 1975. His father owned an engineering business. Curtis was a Presbyterian, and was for some time homeschooled by his parents. His parents agreed with his views to some extent; his father later gave him material for his magazine, and his mother defended him as "divinely inspired". He was raised and lived in Lemon Grove, California. According to an autobiography that he emailed out to his followers, he became racist at the age of 13 after a "self-education" process, after he had become racist against Mexicans while attending Lemon Grove Middle School.

At Helix High School, where he was an honors student, he read Mein Kampf at the school as a freshman. At the age of 17, Curtis wrote in a diary (later confiscated by police) that his life plan was to "rid the Earth of the unwanted un-Aryan elements, by whatever means necessary and possible." He started what he claimed was a chapter of the Ku Klux Klan about this time, of which he was the only member, and referred to himself as an "Exalted Cyclops". He burglarized the school twice, stealing lists of students' home addresses so he could write racist letters to their parents. He was arrested for the burglaries and for vandalizing his school's classrooms with racist terms and swastikas. He was also held on suspicion of sending a death threat to a police officer and sending threats to local newspapers. He was convicted, but since he was a minor, he only received probation and community service. He was expelled.

An academic article in 2012 retrospectively described Curtis as "one of the [white supremacist] movement's early Internet celebrities"; while a contemporary writer for ZDNET called him "arguably [...] the most incendiary voice in the White-supremacy subculture". After he left high school, he spent several years attending right-wing political meetings before he decided this was useless, and shifted to committing what he termed "small-time terrorist acts". He became a prolific creator of local racist fliers. His fliers featured police insignias and phone numbers, a crime when used improperly; Curtis was arrested in August 1997 and convicted of improperly using police materials. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to three years of probation and 100 hours of community service.

In 1996, he created a monthly magazine and website, the Nationalist Observer. He moved from real life to largely online activism in 1997. He had a wide array of connections online through which he spread his ideas; he was known for, unlike many other white supremacists, preaching "unity" among the many different factions of the movement, many of which constantly feuded with each other. Curtis affiliated with several other white supremacists, among them Richard Butler, Matt Hale, Vincent Bertollini, and Tom Metzger, and was in contact with several imprisoned white supremacists, including murderers and members of The Order. He operated out of San Diego, and still lived with his parents at the time.

He was antisemitic, anti-black, and advocated white separatism or extermination of those who are not white. He accused other racists of "soft-pedal[ling]" their racism. A self declared National Socialist, he professed an admiration for Adolf Hitler and other Nazis. He was not a Holocaust denier but said rather that he did not care, and called Holocaust denial a distraction. He believed in antisemitic conspiracies that Jewish people are engaged in a scheme to corrupt society and "overthrow White cultural traditions and destroy the White Race". Curtis argued against authority and "all law enforcement and elections"; Curtis believed the U.S. government to be "the worst enemy of the Aryan race", and said that white supremacists must "never turn against any enemy of the United States government, foreign or domestic". Curtis, while not a member of the White Order of Thule (WOT), was a fan of their publication Crossing the Abyss, which he called "easily the best publication in the movement in terms of contents and presentation". The WOT founder Peter Georgacarakos criticized the Nationalist Observer, however, and Curtis and Nathan Pett, another WOT affiliate, had a falling out. He supported hate crime laws because he believed their being selectively enforced against whites would radicalize them and give white supremacists an excuse for their hatred and violence. He supported Metzger's "worse is better" philosophy; he advocated making other ethnic groups hate white people to further the amount of hatred in the world.

Curtis also ran a separate website, the Weekly Racist Message, and a series of telephone broadcasts, "Weekly Racist Broadcasts". The "Weekly Racist Message" offered by the website was available in text and in audio form using RealPlayer. Curtis's email updates went out to about 800 subscribers at the time. He also ran a web forum, the "Racial Reader's Forum", which other white supremacists would advertise on. His home was raided by the police on several occasions. In 2000, he created an internet guide for the National Observer entitled "Biology for Aryans" that advocated and explained the usage of bioterrorism agents, including typhoid, botulism, and anthrax. Other issues of the publication included a "security issue" that told readers how to avoid getting caught. He funded his operations through a mail-order catalogue of racist items.